RT Dissertation/Thesis
T1 Optimizing community-based breeding for indigenous goat breeds in Ethiopia
A1 Belete,Tatek Woldu
WP 2016/11/16
AB Goats are vital sources of meat, milk, manure, income and social security for poor smallholder farmers living in harsh and dry environments. Over the last decade, goat population in Ethiopia increased more rapidly than sheep and cattle population. Despite the current boom of goat population, contribution of goats for national meat and meat production as well as for export earnings is minimal. Moreover, the carcass yield of local goats remained below the East African and the world average over the last decade. Slow growth rates of goats, high mortality rate and low commercial off-take rate were the major challenges of smallholder goat production in Ethiopia. In order to overcome some of the these constraints, designing a sustainable community-based breeding program (CBBP) which considers local breeds, farmers’ trait preferences and local breeding organizations is a promising entry point.
Understanding the multifaceted functions of goats across diverse production systems and identifying breeding objective traits and their relative economic importance are crucial for designing and implementing CBBPs. So far, choice experiments (CE) were employed as one option to identify breeding objective traits and elicit their economic values, but limited information is currently available in providing a comprehensive understanding of trait preferences from producers and market perspectives. Furthermore, sustainable genetic improvement programs not only focus on the technical feasibilities, but also analyze the organizational aspects of the breeding scheme under specified framework conditions.
The overall objective of the study is to contribute for designing optimized goat community-based breeding programs that consider the multiple functions of goats, producers’ trait preferences, market demands and organizational frameworks by taking into consideration of the diverse goat production systems. The specific objectives are (i) to analyze factors affecting contributions of goat farming to household economic success and household dietary diversity in three goat production systems, (ii) to investigate goat breeding objectives and economic values of traits based on revealed and stated preferences and (iii) to identify major stakeholders, organizational networks and other elements of organization and their influence on the establishment and successful operation of community-based goat breeding.
The study was conducted in Abergele, Konso and Meta Robi districts of Ethiopia representing arid agro-pastoral (AAP), semi-arid agro-pastoral (SAAP) and highland mixed crop-livestock (HMCL) systems, respectively. Household interviews using semi-structured questionnaires were conducted involving 180 households. The survey focused on income and costs of the major household agricultural enterprises as well as dietary diversity of households. Gross margin (GM) and net benefit (considering tangible and intangible benefits) were used as indicators of economic success of goat keeping. Linear mixed model (SAS version 9.3) was employed to analyze factors affecting economic success of goat keeping and ordinal regression was used to predict effects of socio-economic variables on households’ dietary diversity. A choice experiment (CE) involving 360 farmers was conducted to identify farmers’ trait preferences across diverse goat production systems. Besides, in order to understand buyers’ revealed preferences (RP) for goat traits, market data of 796 goat transactions were collected. Relationships between goats’ attributes and prices were estimated by hedonic modeling, while economic values of traits included in the CE were estimated by conditional logit (CL) model. Part worth value of a trait which indicates the relative importance of a trait was calculated based on the implicit prices farmers were willing to pay (WTP) for an improvement of a trait. NLOGIT 4.0 econometric software was used for analyzing the CE and RP data. The organization of smallholder goat breeding from village to national level were investigated through six focus group discussions with 68 goat keepers, key informant interviews with personnel of ten public and seven private institutions and social network analysis (SNA) of goat production and marketing structures. Descriptive statistics were used to analyze data generated from key informant interviews. Social Network Visualizer (SocNetV) was employed to visualize the social network structures.
Goat keepers living in the harsh environment, which was represented by the AAP system, had significantly lower goat commercial off-take than those in SAAP and HMCL systems. Interaction between flock size and production system significantly (P<0.001) affected the net benefits from goat keeping. The increment of net benefit by keeping larger flocks was higher in AAP system, due to higher in-kind and intangible benefits of goats in this system. In contrast, farmers in the HMCL system had highest goat commercial off-take rate and they tend to sell growing goats (< 1 year) more frequently than matured ones. Effect of goat flock size as a predictor of household dietary diversity was not significant in any of the investigated production systems. Nevertheless, a significant positive correlation was observed between income from goats and dietary diversity in AAP system, indicating the indirect role of goat production for food security.
Results of the revealed and stated preference studies showed that farmers derive high utility from large body size breeding goats in all production systems and buyers consistently paid high price for goats with higher body weight. In the AAP system, high economic values were assigned to adaptive traits such as disease resistance for both bucks and does. Goat breeders in this system were willing to pay nearly three times more than those in the SAAP and HMCL systems for breeding bucks with high disease resistance ability, while this trait was not considered as a determining factor for selecting breeding does in the HMCL system. Goat producers in the HMCL system were willing to pay more than farmers in the AAP and SAAP systems for a doe with twinning ability. 
Results of the breeding organizational analysis showed that own and village flocks were the major sources of breeding goats in all districts. In AAP system, however, NGOs and research centers also supplied breeding goats to farmers. The identified famers’ organizations linked to goat production and marketing includes multipurpose cooperatives, farmer development groups and farmer networks. The multipurpose cooperatives in the AAP system were engaged in more marketing activities than those in the SAAP and HMCL systems. Key stakeholders such as research institutes and NGOs were absent in HMCL system. The SNA indicated that district extension officers had the highest values of degree and closeness centrality indicating their trustful relationship with goat keepers and best accessibility. 
The higher in-kind and intangible benefits of goats in AAP system coupled with high economic values attached to adaptive traits indicates the need of inclusion of survival traits in addition to the performance traits in formulating breeding goals in the harsh arid environments. In the mixed crop-livestock system, where generation of cash income through increased commercial goat off-take is the prominent farmers’ priority and twinning abilities of goats were highly valued, improving reproductive performances to increase the number of marketable goats should be targeted. However, poor institutional presence and insignificant economic role of goats in HMCL and SAAP systems makes establishing goat CBBPs less feasible, while the active institutional support and better marketing opportunities in the AAP system makes goat CBBPs more promising. District extension officers should play major facilitation and liaison roles in the establishment and operation of the CBBPs due to their prominent position in the social network. 
K1 Züchtung
K1 Ziegen
K1 Äthiopien
PP Hohenheim
PB Kommunikations-, Informations- und Medienzentrum der Universität Hohenheim
UL http://opus.uni-hohenheim.de/volltexte/2016/1280